Co-Designer, for Reset: Towards a New Commons, Center for Architecture, New York, April 14-September 3, 2022
Aging is not a problem to be solved. The problem is the range of barriers—physical, social, financial, and cultural—that make it difficult to grow older with dignity and in community. Older people in the United States are often either isolated at home or subjected to institutionalized forms of care. Aging Against the Machine advocates for alternative housing and community development scenarios for aging that open up multiple options for care, improve physical access to the city, enhance resource sharing, and strengthen community ties.
Aging Against the Machine has been developed in solidarity with local residents, who contributed through a series of roundtables and conversations. Making visible, connecting, and expanding local initiatives and amplifying resident voices, the project manifests through proposals in a range of scales—from interior home renovations to collective land ownership models and intergenerational housing projects. Diverse spaces for commoning and networks of care at the scale of the building and the neighborhood are integrated with public social programs and mutual aid initiatives, ultimately contributing to an intersectional, community-based approach to aging.
Team
Neeraj Bhatia, THE OPEN WORKSHOP, California College of the Arts; Ignacio G. Galan, Barnard College, Columbia University; Karen Kubey, Pratt Institute, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
With Todd Levon Brown, The University of Texas at Austin; Lindsay A. Goldman, Grantmakers in Aging; Annie Ledbury, East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation
Research assistant: Katharina Sauermann; Models: Pablo Saiz del Rio and Vivian Rotie; Drawings: Cesar Adrian Lopez, THE OPEN WORKSHOP, University of New Mexico
Resident Liaison: David Peters, Black Liberation Walking Tour; Resident Collaborators: Juanita Nevis Cross, Ernest Johnson, Madlynn Johnson, Secret Peeples, Jackie Peters, Jesse Williams.
Aging Against the Machine was developed alongside design studios taught at Barnard and Columbia Colleges, California College of the Arts, and Pratt Institute.
Photo 1: Brett Snyder; photo 2: Asya Gorovits
Reset: Towards a New Commons curated by Barry Bergdoll and Juliana Barton
View a digital version of the exhibition here
Faculty Fellow in Design for Spatial Justice and Visiting Associate Professor, University of Oregon, 2020
Graduate and undergraduate studio
“Visualizing Health Equity” contributes visions for an equitable future, where everyone in the Portland Jade District has the opportunity to lead a healthier life. With Jade District community environmental justice frameworks as a starting point, the studio explored connections between the built environment and racial and socio-economic health inequities, examining the full role that architecture and urban design can play in reducing those inequities.
Students developed design proposals centered on affordable housing and community spaces, on a site in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Oregon, synthesizing lessons from APANO, a local Asian American environmental justice group; the UO Institute for Health in the Built Environment; and spatial justice theorists. They were asked to design for resident priorities and APANO’s intersectional approach to climate, health, and housing.
Images: 1-3: Alexandria Clark, Nick Dworshak, and Delaney Hetrick (video); 4-7: Lorine Moellentine and McKenzie Vanko (video); 8: Lorine Moellentine; 9: Danielle Valdez
Learn more in Archinect and this IHBE video
Faculty Fellow in Design for Spatial Justice and Visiting Associate Professor, University of Oregon, 2019
Graduate and undergraduate studio
Karen co-taught "Rebuilding Cornerstones: Toward Spatial Justice for Portland’s Black Diaspora" with artists Cleo Davis and Kayin Talton Davis, as part of the Davis' long-term engagement in the historically Black neighborhood of Albina and with Black communities in Portland. Working with local youths, UO students created designs that combined new residential and commercial development with adaptive reuse of the historic Mayo House as the “Artchive” for Black histories and futures. Students responded to community input and proposed speculative designs contributing to spatial and racial justice.
Students Joshua Gabbard and Olivia Bain's "Higher Ground" project builds off of the history of the site and surrounding community by unearthing centuries of Black prosperity and intergenerational knowledge.
Student Jade Danek's "Afro Lab" provides a platform for Portland’s Black diaspora to envision their future alongside advancements in digital art and technology.
Images: 1: Jade Danek; 2: Joshua Gabbard and Olivia Bain; 3: studio site visit; 4. field trip to the City of Portland Archives; 5. master class with James Buckley and Skyla Leavitt, UO Historic Preservation; 6. midterm presentation; 7. UO class and youth partners; 8. final presentation
Learn more in Archinect, this UO Spatial Justice Podcast, and the studio Instagram
Designer and Project Manager, Museum of the City of New York, 2011-12
Created “The City as Living Room: Flexible Single and Shared Housing on the Grand Concourse,” a design proposal for “Making Room,” a housing design and advocacy project co-sponsored by the Architectural League of New York and the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, and exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York.
With Team R8: Jonathan Kirschenfeld, Nancy Owens, Susanne Schindler, Brian Schulman, and Erin Shnier
Curator and Producer, Center for Architecture, New York, 2013
The exhibition Low Rise High Density examined a housing type celebrated in the 1960s and ‘70s, and what it means in the United States today. Co-sponsored by the Institute for Public Architecture, and presented at the Center for Architecture, Low Rise High Density presented architectural drawings, photographs, and oral histories with project architects, tracing the typology over the last 50 years.
Exhibition Design: The Letter D
Curatorial Team: Nicky Chang, Rebecca Costanzo, Arianne Kouri, Sarah Rafson, Sara Romanoski, and James Walsh
Read more here and in Metropolis
Photos by Eve Dilworth Rosen
Co-Curator and Designer, Housing Works, New York, 2012
Living Room explored the housing and related services created by Housing Works for homeless individuals and families living with HIV/AIDS. The installation was grounded in a full-scale blueprint for one supportive-housing unit in the Keith D. Cylar House, the first of Housing Works' many housing projects throughout New York's five boroughs.Designed for Housing Works: Design on a Dime at the Metropolitan Pavilion.
With Gavin Browning, Greta Hansen, Glen Cummings/MTWTF
Read more here and in Architizer
Photos by Alan Chin
Timeline graphics courtesy of MTWTF
Curator and Producer, Columbia University and the Sugar Hill Apartments, New York, 2014-15
"Total Reset" was a yearlong program series of the Institute for Public Architecture, created in response to New York Mayor de Blasio’s “total reset” for housing. A "Total Reset" exhibition was on view in the Sugar Hill Apartments, as part of the No Longer Empty's "If You Build It." Inaugural IPA Fellows developed four research and design proposals for public and below-market housing in New York.
"Total Reset," gained major coverage in the New York Times is reflected in proposed NYC zoning text.
Assistant: Sben Korsh
Fellows: Kaja Kühl, in association with Columbia University GSAPP’s 5 Borough Studio; Nadine Maleh; Quilian Riano; and the team of Sagi Golan, Miriam Peterson, and Nathan Rich
Photos by Sben Korsh
Read more here and in the New York Times
Junior Architect, New York, 2004-06
Worked directly under principal on below-market housing design, zoning studies, and master planning. Coordinated a successful proposal for a mixed-use development with 1,600 housing units in Far Rockaway. Produced original research and graphic representations used in Municipal Art Society’s rezoning proposal for the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront. Assisted with site analysis through construction documentation for Bronx mid-rise La Fontaine Apartments (pictured).
Rendering produced by a colleague
Read more here
